The news filtered out of the large house like smoke, not even noticed at first but impossible to keep in once the wind had picked up on it. Dante would not know until rumors of Isla being pregnant would already have been told on the streets, becoming stories he could not possibly control. What started as a hushed rumor among the employees now reached beyond the perimeter of the property, into the alleys, into the bars, into the ears of men who had been waiting a long time for a sign of vulnerability.
Luca made matters worse. Dante's foe had always been quick to use dirty secrets, and now he used the news as his trump card. He told the criminal world that Dante, once the man everybody held in esteem as not to be trifled with, wasn't such a hard man anymore. That his hard feelings over a woman and the baby she was carrying had made him soft. That the hard grip that used to demand respect through fear now shook with something close to being easily injured.
